


Neither Confirm Nor Deny

by wrongfun (scumtrout)



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27589319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scumtrout/pseuds/wrongfun
Summary: For the prompt: 'Tarrlok babysits Ikki'. Both parties endure this for a whole 5 minutes, and still find time for a haiku battle. (This fic belongs in the same continuity as 'Assume Positive Intent'.)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 34





	Neither Confirm Nor Deny

Tarrlok is eating lunch, sitting in one of the rear rows of the council room, when Tenzin and Pema wander up to him.

Technically one should not eat lunch in the council room, but Tarrlok has back-to-back meetings and he’s past giving a shit. If anyone gives him any grief about it, everyone who works with him will just corroborate the story that he’s so hard-working he barely finds time to eat.

Lunch consists of some stew in a flask, fetched by an aide from a place nearby. Anyone bothered by the smell of stew in the council room should just be grateful that the stew doesn’t contain fish. (Although maybe Tarrlok will eat fish stew in the council room tomorrow if his meetings don’t go the way he wants.)

Anyway, only Pema and Tenzin pay him any notice.

It’s Pema who Tarrlok spots first, because she’s the prettier of the two. Pema smiles at him, and his day brightens a little…. But not too much, because Tenzin is standing a step behind her.

“Hello Pema,” Tarrlok says, and glances to her husband. “Tenzin.”

“Tarrlok,” Tenzin says. Something behind Tenzin ruffles his robes.

“How are you?” Pema asks.

“Never better,” says Tarrlok. He doesn’t even mind that Pema has interrupted his lunch. “What brings you here?”

“There are some documents on, er, legal requirements for sky bison in the basement.” Pema says, then clarifies, “The documents are in the basement. Not the sky bison. We’ve come to collect the documents.”

“Ah.

“Tenzin’s father wrote the documents,” Pema adds, as if that might be of interest. 

“I… didn’t know those existed,” Tarrlok says. If he had more free time, he’d read the documents, just to see if they mentioned anything about whether sky bisons could legally perform their sky bison business over inhabited areas or if this was strictly prohibited. Tarrlok occasionally sees Tenzin’s sky bison floating over the city, and Tarrlok swears he once saw the creature drop a not inconsiderable turd perilously close to the Fire Nation embassy. Tarrlok would hope that such a thing is meant to be prohibited. If it is _not_ prohibited, then someone should do something about that, but that’s not a hill he wants to die on.

“There is a lot of stuff down there,” Pema says. “You should get someone to show you around sometime.” Tenzin then chooses that moment to cough.

Tarrlok finds himself looking at the other man. Tenzin affects an expression of indifference. Tarrlok smiles at him slightly. Tenzin’s left eye twitches.

Then a squeaky voice from behind Tenzin says, “Will we be here long?”

Tarrlok now sees what’s ruffling Tenzin’s robes. There is a child behind Tenzin, gripping his coat. Tarrlok can’t remember the name of the child, he just knows that the child is the younger of the two females in the airbender family. Perhaps Tarrlok should just be grateful they didn’t bring the other two children as well.

“We won’t be too long,” Pema answers.

The child already looks bored. “I don’t need to go with you to look at scrolls and stuff, right?” Her voice takes on a petulant note. “Can I go outside? I won’t go anywhere or touch anything or talk to people.” She starts to rock on her feet, still clutching Tenzin’s robes so she’s a dead weight swinging back and forth while using him as an anchor.

Tenzin and Pema share a look, as if they have just realized the perils of taking a bored child into a basement full of important documents.

Then Pema asks Tarrlok, brightly, “Can you watch Ikki for a few minutes?”

Tarrlok says, “Er.”

Pema says, “We’ll be right back.”

Tarrlok says, “Er. Sure.”

Tenzin gives Pema a very meaningful glance, and something unsaid passes between the two of them, and then Tenzin looks away.

“Thanks. I really promise we won’t be along,” says Pema, then addresses the child. “Ikki, sweetie, you can wait with Tarrlok for a few minutes so you don’t have to go into the basement.”

Ikki stops rocking back and forth and eyes Tarrlok beadily. Her attention settles on his lunch. Tarrlok finds himself holding the flask of stew a little closer to his chest.

Ikki then releases her grip on her father’s robes.

“Okay,” she says.

“You’ll be a good girl, right?” Pema asks. “A nice, _polite_ girl.”

“Yes,” the child says.

“And you’ll sit on a chair while we’re gone, and stay there?”

“Yes,” the child says once more, with a bit of impatience.

“We’ll be right back,” Pema repeats, and then she and Tenzin are already making a fast exit. Tenzin glances back at his shoulder at Tarrlok, but this time, Tarrlok can’t be bothered to smirk at him.

\--

Ikki plants her butt on the a chair,watches her parents walk away to wherever the basement is. She dislikes basements. Her home has a cellar for storing food and one time Jinora trapped her in it, just to see what she would do, and she saw a spider web, and there was a moth in the spiderweb, and the spider ate it.

As soon as her parents are out of sight, Ikki looks at the man sitting next to her.

He smells like soap but also food. He has the longest hair she has ever seen. He should be handsome like a prince or something but he’s not handsome at all. He has a mean face. When you look at him close up you can see all the lines around his eyes. She suspects that he is actually a pirate.

The man looks at Ikki as if she is a bug.

He doesn’t say anything to her. Not ‘hello’ or ‘how are you?’ or ‘what do you think about this place? This boring place, full of grown ups?’ Whenever she leaves her island, life becomes a bunch of boring places full of grown ups, and then the best thing to do is find some other kids and play games with them, but there are no other kids here.

The man still doesn’t say anything.

Ikki decides to be friendly.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

\--

“Tarrlok,” says Tarrlok.

“Tullik?” says Ikki.

“Tarrlok.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Are you asking why I’m named Tarrlok?” 

“Yep.”

“I can’t answer that.”

“You don’t know why you’re named Tarrlok?”

“My parents never bothered to explain it to me.”

“Huh,” says Ikki. “When were you born?”

“I cannot answer that at this time.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am eating stew.”

“That’s not…” Ikki trails off. “I mean, how old are you?”

“How old are _you_?”

“Seven,” Ikkki says quickly, then gives him a look that clearly says ‘your move, motherfucker’.

Tarrlok is not going to let a seven year old take control of the conversation. Normally he’d try to appear affable, but in addition to eating a rushed lunch, he also forgot to get breakfast this morning, and the work of maintaining a pleasant persona requires calories that he currently does not have. Besides, as head of the council, he spends enough time already dealing with adults who have the mental faculties of children. He did not sign up to interact with an _actual_ child today.

“So, Ikki. What do you want to be when you grow up?” he asks, resorting to his default ‘talking to a child’ script.

“A reporter.”

Great. One of those. Tarrlok has always wondered if reporters start off young and innocent, then turn into monsters as they approach adulthood. Looking at Ikki, he knows the answer to that: reporters are reporters from birth, and Ikki is just a reporter in its larval stage. Was Ikki born through normal means, or did Pema lay eggs in the corpse of a hapless public servant one day and Ikki was one of the creatures that hatched?

This thought seems unkind towards Pema, _but_ the woman did spawn a reporter.

“You never told me how old you are,” Ikki says.

“I’m the youngest person on the Council,” Tarrlok says. “But compared to you, I’m very old.”

“My teachers say I can read books for older kids,” Ikki says imperiously. “What do the beads in your hair mean?”

Tarrlok could reply with ‘they are a talisman to protect my hair from the sticky hands of small children. The carvings on them are an ancient script that spells out F U C K O F F’. “They don’t mean anything.”

“Yes they do.”

“You seem to know more about this than me,” Tarrlok says.

Ikki reaches out for one of his braids, and Tarrlok instinctively moves out of reach.

“One of the beads in your hair has a fish carved on it,” Ikki says accusingly.

“What do you have against fish?”

“Nothing,” Ikki says. “Can I see it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“My previous statement requires no further clarification.”

“Do you ever hit yourself in the face with your own braids?”

“Ha. No.” Not anymore.

“Is that La carved on the bead?” Ikki persists.

“Maybe.”

“Is Tui carved on one of the other beads?”

“No.” Tarrlok decides that the child is unpleasantly intelligent and therefore a menace to society.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are the beads made of?”

“No idea.”

“Are they made of whale teeth?”

“No. Wood. Ivory - that is, whale teeth - gets damaged if it gets wet. Not practical.”

“You just said you had no idea what they were made of.”

“I lied.”

That makes Ikki sit back with her eyebrows raised. She cannot BELIEVE that an ADULT _LIED_ to HER.

“What else are you lying about?” she demands.

“If I said I was lying about something, how do you know I wouldn’t be lying about that?” Tarrlok takes a moment to pluck some meat out of his stew with his chopsticks. Might as well eat it before it gets cold. “In fact, what if... I was lying when I said I was lying?”

“Then you’d still be a liar!”

“But if I said I was lying when I said I was lying, I’d be admitting the truth to you, wouldn’t I?”

“No no no,” Ikki says flounders, waving her arms in the air. “That’s wrong. Because if you said you were lying when you said you were lying, then you said TWO things instead of just one, and one of them has to be a lie and one of them has to be true and, and....”

“So if I said ‘I am not a liar’, I could be lying, but if I said ‘I am a liar’, I would be being honest, wouldn’t I?”

“Well obviously!” Ikki declares.

“Why would a liar be honest?”

Ikki crosses her arms. “I don’t know!”

“What was the last thing you lied about?” Tarrlok asks.

“Nothing!”

“Well that is quite obviously a lie.”

Ikki gets a thousand yard stare, her brows furrowing, and then she confesses, “I said I washed my hands after using the toilet but I didn’t.”

Tarrlok looks at her in revulsion.

“I’m sorry!” Ikki says. “I’ll do it next time but I don’t like having wet hands.”

Then Ikki pauses there, and asks, “Wait. Why would whale teeth get damaged if they get wet? They come from whale mouths, which are wet, and whales live in the sea, which is also wet. Did you lie about that?”

“You should find an object made of ivory, ideally something really old, and drop it in some water to find out.”

“I don’t think you’re a good person,” Ikki states.

“At least I wash my hands after using the toilet,” Tarrlok mutters at her.

Ikki takes a deep breath, puffing out her small chest, and announces, “I’m going to make a poem about you.”

Tarrlok pauses with a piece of stew raised halfway to his mouth, and stares at her.

Ikki counts out the syllables on her fingers as she speaks. “You are like the sea. Far away, you seem nice. Up close, mean and cold.”

Damn. Tarrlok is sitting next to a genuine child assassin. He intones quickly, “I was eating lunch. Why should I answer to you? You are crass and shrill.” He does not count the syllables on his fingers, even though he wants to.

Ikki, outraged, retorts, “You, man with three braids. Normal men have just one braid. Three is showing off.”

“The buns on your head. They look like small oranges. Small orange head child.”

Ikki stands up on her chair. “Your poems are bad. Your stew smells like a gross butt. You…”

Wait. Tarrlok thinks he hears familiar voices from an adjacent room. He can’t tell what they’re saying, but he’d recognise Tenzin’s pompous inflection anywhere.

Tarrlok tells Ikki, “Your parents are coming back.”

Ikki frantically sits back down on the chair and freezes into place as rigidly as if Tarrlok had actually encased her in a block of ice. 

Pema and Tenzin wander over slowly, apparently in the middle of discussing… the prospect of creating more sky bison. Great googaly moogaly. Tarrlok hopes all that business is conducted while the bison _aren’t_ airborne.

Tarrlok grimly keeps eating his stew.

When Pema and Tenzin are in earshot, Tarrlok says, “Oh, you’re back,” then glances to Ikki.

Ikki gives him a shifty glance in return. “We were doing poetry,” Ikki explains to her parents.

“That’s nice,” Pema says vaguely.

“She is very evocative with language,” Tarrlok mutters.

“Yes, she’s very intelligent,” Pema says, which may explain why her hair already looks grey in places. “Thanks for watching her. I really appreciate it.”

Tenzin eyes Tarrlok over Pema’s head. Tarrlok resists the urge to make a face at him.

“You should come over for dinner sometime,” Pema tells Tarrlok. Tarrlok feels a slight draft of cold air, but still ignores Tenzin.

“That would be nice. Thank you. My schedule’s pretty busy at the moment, but I’ll let you know when I’m free,” Tarrlok says, which is a nice way of saying ‘Absolutely not, unless it’s good for my career somehow’.

“Great,” Pema chirps. “Okay, we’ll leave you in peace now. Come on, Ikki.”

“Bye Tullik,” Ikki says primly.

Tarrlok watches the family walk away, and makes a deliberate attempt to forget the name of the child. He then finishes off his stew, while making a mental note: the next time he wants to eat a quick lunch in peace, he will ask for natto, or perhaps something that makes heavy use of shrimp paste.

Or perhaps, if he ever has a nervous breakdown and decides to sabotage his entire career, he will eat a durian. It’s meant to be good for you. It’s definitely good for Tarrlok if it keeps children away.


End file.
